In the 1980’s, LERN introduced to North American continuing education and lifelong learning programs, the Information Specialist position. LERN had successfully added the Information Specialist position to LERN’s staffing structure and was reaping significant benefits, including increased LERN member satisfaction.
Presently a large number of continuing education and lifelong learning programs have adopted the Information Specialist position, or a similar position possibly with a different name, with responsibilities for ensuring customers get the support they need. Specific duties include answering questions, making decisions about refunds, encouraging students/participants to select transfers and vouchers when a class/activity is cancelled, and serving as customer advocates.
Over the last five years with growing competition and the need to improve overall program performance, Information Specialists have taken up three important responsibilities:
- Either by following up on inquiries or information session participation, tracking multi-class/activity programs (such as certificate programs) and encouraging students/participants to complete, or projecting and promoting to students/participants the next class/activity they should be registering for, Information Specialists have become proactive about generating additional participation and/or revenue.
- Being proactive about recruiting for additional participation and revenue is important, but also critical is increasing student/participant services – more in-depth advising than just answering general questions, having pertinent research available for students/participants trying to determine the value of the offering(s), and connecting students/participants with additional resources, such as job placement services.
- In an effort to allow revenue generators to spend more time on revenue generation, Information Specialists have spearheaded Operations Teams taking on tasks historically handled by revenue generators, such as lining up repeat classes/activities, generating tabulated evaluations and data, and handling other more repetitive day-to-day tasks.
Information Specialists have also been advocates for shifting Operations Teams from being only customer serviced-based, to being customer-centric. Customer-centric is a specific approach to doing business that focuses on the customer. Customer-centric programs listen and ensure that the customer is at the center of the program’s philosophy, operations and ideas. A customer-centric program offers more than good service. Customer-centric programs care about needs – something customers have to have, not something they would like to have. Information Specialists have been identifying critical fixes that get present students/participants to repeat, but also open up the door to people not participating because of the problem.
As the LERN team travels North America, we are pleased to see more Information Specialists, but also their expanded role supporting both internal and external customers.